http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
JUST before theJuly 4th holiday, a story appeared in the pages
of one big city newspaper about a series of violent crimes in its impoverished
African-American neighborhoods. The story has already made the rounds of
conservative media outlets, but like other reports from the real world, which
might disturb liberals’ sense of their own virtue, it will not travel much beyond
the city in question.
The city is Cincinnati, the scene in April of a black race riot, whose
targets were Cincinnati police and the white population. The lawless
indignation of this event rallied self-appointed champions of
"social justice" from coast to coast, as it always does.
It was not called a "black race riot" by any self-respecting
media institutions of course. Although white citizens of Cincinnati
were dragged from their vehicles and beaten for their skin color,
there was scant concern for the "hate crime" aspects
of the outrage, to which liberals (in more politically correct
situations) normally attend. It was treated, instead, as a black
"protest" against "racial profiling" and "police
brutality" – charges both factually contradicted and legally
untested, but nevertheless accepted by progressive elites who
would not know what to think otherwise. In liberal circles, the
Cincinnati race riot was treated as a civil rights "uprising"
against white racism, which in liberal gospels is the only
possible source of evil afflicting the black world.

In
response to Cincinnati’s riot (and its perceived injustice), all
the forces of liberal self-righteousness descended on the city.
The usual race hustlers ranted about "civil rights;"
the local politicians folded under this moral assault and indicted
the police; even the Ashcroft Justice Department piled on with
the mob. (After all, how could a man who had been nearly lynched
for harboring "pro-slavery" prejudice acquit himself
otherwise?) In tediously familiar outlines, the Cincinnati events
became another "social justice" charade.

But
when all the shouting was done, and the civil rights bureaucrats
had gone home, the reality remained, as it always does: This was
a war against the defenders of law in Cincinnati; and, in particular,
against the defenders of law in the impoverished Cincinnati neighborhoods
inhabited by blacks.

In
all this, the city was a microcosm of contemporary urban America
itself.

In the weeks after
the April riots, gunfire crackled at an alarming rate through
Over-the-Rhine, West End, Avondale, Bond Hill and other predominantly
African-American neighborhoods … neighborhoods that paid a toll
in broken glass and looted buildings during the riots …

To
put the statistics in perspective, understand that last year --
before the race riot and the liberal assault on Cincinnati police--
there were less than 10 shootings in the same 10 weeks in these
same neighborhoods, where the most vulnerable of Cincinnati’s
citizens live. A successful riot against police will do wonders
to lift the spirits of criminal predators. That is why this year,
as the Enquirer reports, "black-on-black shootings
noticeably spiked after April 7," the date the anti-law enforcement
riot began. Like the young criminal whose flight from police and
consequent death was the incident that actually precipitated the
riot, all of the 22 suspects arrested for these shootings are
black males.

Now
consider the other side of the story. Consider the perspective
of an under-represented party in these events, the law enforcement
community in Cincinnati. This community was in the habit of reading
Miranda rights to every predator it arrested however calculating
and vile his criminal misdeeds. But now it saw itself presumed
guilty in front of the entire nation, and before evidence of any
crime had even been presented. This community now witnessed a
swifter indictment lodged against one of its own, than against
many of the felons it had pursued. Overnight, and without probable
cause, it had become the target of a national lynch mob seeking
"justice" from a policeman for the crime of performing
his protective duty. In advance of any trial or presentation of
the facts, this community could not fail to notice that it had
been put in the criminal dock and had no defenders in the national
press or even among city officials who were pledged to uphold
the law and support the public good.

The
reaction of law enforcement is not really difficult to imagine.
But no speculation is necessary. A recent newsletter to members
of the Cincinnati Fraternal Order of Police, contains this warning
from its President: "If you want to make 20 traffic stops
a shift and chase every dope dealer you see, you go right ahead.
Just remember that if something goes wrong, or you make the slightest
mistake in that split second, it could result in having your worst
nightmare come true for you and your family, and City Hall will
sell you out."

Allow
me a certain bluntness in interpolating these facts: In Cincinnati,
the crusade for social justice conducted by self-righteous race
hustlers, myopic idealists and political whores has produced a
police force predictably (and sensibly) reluctant to continue
enforcing the law at its own unappreciated expense. This has produced
an equally predictable crime wave whose mounting roster of victims
is -- also predictably -- black.

The cops on the street
have different names for it: de-policing, selective disengagement,
tactical detachment. They even joke about it, calling themselves
‘tourists in blue.’

The
reporter describes the new police posture as "passive law
enforcement," and explains that this is when officers become
reluctant to make preventive "stops," cease to aggressively
pursue criminals – specifically when the criminals are black –
and only respond to 911 calls: "Many officers, wary of being
labeled racists or racial profilers say they hold back or bypass
opportunities to make traffic stops or arrests of black suspects."

And
why should they, since there’s a national campaign to make them
the criminals for pursuing such methods? "Racial profiling"
– as defined by an increasingly unprincipled civil rights mafia
and a desperate-for-the-black-vote Democratic Party – means only
that more blacks are stopped by police than are represented in
the population as a whole. But blacks commit more than 40% of
the violent crimes in the nation. In other words, the only way
to avoid racial profiling (defined this way) is to cut crime prevention
by 28%, or some roughly similar figure. (Put another way, the
crusade against "racial profiling" is a massive liberal
denial of the problem of black crime.)

Racial
profiling obviously does exist. But like other police abuses,
it is committed by individual cops, black as well as white. On
the other hand, with the exception of rogue officers (who will
not appear in the racial profiling statistics that "civil
rights" groups are demanding), and except for an occasional
rogue precinct, there is no evidence whatsoever that racial profiling
is a systemic practice in any police department in the country.
Not a single reported study takes into account the race of officers
making the alleged racial stops (to mention only one problem of
current profiling "research"). Without such an inquiry,
and by statistics alone, how could one possibly ascertain whether
stops are racially motivated?

Racial
profiling as a systematic persecution of black males is a myth.
A dangerous myth. Yet, in the atmosphere of racial hysteria that
has been whipped up by the Democratic Party and the "civil
rights" left, it would take a brave politician to withstand
the pressure for racial profiling laws, and an even braver politician
to stand up for the safety – and rights – of citizens who are
poor and mainly minorities, and who inhabit the high-crime areas
of our inner cities.

In
the Seattle story, a black policeman describes the "problem"
of racial profiling as "a phantom." He explains the
obvious fact that police deployments are made in response to the
incidence of crimes. An inexorable sequence follows: The greater
the incidence of crimes, the greater the concentration of police,
the more contacts with the public, the more potential for "conflict."
The more potential, that is, for unscrupulous criminals in the
’hood and their willing political allies to manufacture a racial
incident and – with any luck – an urban riot.

The
young man whose death provided a pretext for the events in Cincinnati
had fourteen warrants for his arrest and was fleeing 12 officers
with drawn guns at the time of his demise. It was reasonable for
any responsible law enforcement official to suspect that he was
more dangerous than in retrospect he turned out to be. Hence the
"conflict." In a similar incident in New York City,
Amadou Diallo was accosted in the dead of night, in a high-crime
area, by police responding to a call for help and in pursuit of
a vicious rapist. Another "conflict." But it was the
inflammatory intervention of demagogic arsonists like Al Sharpton
and Jesse Jackson, and the credulous cast of progressives who
followed in their wake, that turned this incident into the racial
melodrama that left a trail of civic damage in its wake.

Through
aggressive policing in the previous seven years, the Giuliani
administration had made New York City safer for blacks who inhabit
its high crime areas than any previous administration on record.
Giuliani’s methods reduced the number of police shootings of NY
citizens by nearly 80%, and reduced the criminal homicide rate
by two-thirds. Yet the racial demagogues were able to exploit
one egregious abuse of police authority in the case of Abner Louima
(for which the guilty were quickly prosecuted) and two or three
ambiguous ones, and parlay them into a public lynching of Giuliani
and the New York police force. By the time liberals were through
tarring the Mayor as a genocidal racist, opinion polls showed
him losing 98.8% of the black vote in New York, This was a result
the devil himself could not surpass. The practical consequence
of this racial witch-hunt: recruitment of police in New York City
has now become a major law enforcement problem itself. Who is
going to suffer as a result?

The
war against "racial profiling," which is being zealously
prosecuted by every self-worshipping liberal in America, is really
a war against poor blacks and other inner-city minorities, who
are the main targets of violent crime. This war is being conducted
by "civil rights" activists and the Democratic Party.
It is feebly opposed by Republicans who are themselves under racial
attack from the left, and who – like the police – cannot see self-benefit
in resisting the trend. Why be burned as a racist, when you can
go along and get along, and maybe sneak through?

Which
leaves the most vulnerable and voiceless members of the American
community with few to defend them against the predators who roam
their mean and dangerous inner-city
streets.

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